Imprisonment
by Crescent Venus
Summary: Coercion. Captivity. The endless struggle to maintain sanity. Just a few of the things Inoue Orihime has to deal with in Hueco Mundo... Drabble series
1. Flower

There are no flowers in Hueco Mundo. Gin had watched the girl wander through the fortress grounds, searching for the tiniest scrap of vegetation. Obviously, she wanted to be reminded of home.

Gin, surprisingly, shares her longing. His own thoughts often turn towards the memory of the loveliest flower he'd ever seen, one that irrevocably reminded him of Soul Society. Red-gold shining in the sun, clear ice-blue never flickering. He would give anything—yes, for this, anything—to stroke those silken petals once more.

But his flower would never have survived transplanting to the cold, arid soil here. So Gin must content himself with memories.

* * *

_'Lo there! This is the first of a series of drabbles detailing moments of Inoue Orihime's coercion to Hueco Mundo and subsequent imprisonment in Las Noches. No particular order, no particular theme or characters. Hope you have fun reading them!_

_Same obligatory disclaimer exists for all of these drabbles; I'm not the creator of Bleach, and am using these characters for fun and not profit._


	2. Myth

The first time that Aizen tried to get her to eat, he sent an arrancar to her chambers, bearing a small ebony bowl. Inside it were three perfect pomegranates, ripe with a heady flush. She'd screamed, and thrown the bowl across the room, nearly decapitating an unsuspecting Ulquiorra.

Aizen was an educated man, so it couldn't have been coincidental. For that alone, she refused to eat for another three days. Later, Orihime wondered, briefly, if she should have saved the small knife sent with the bowl.

But no matter. Persephone would still rebel.

* * *

_Same drill as before, etc, etc. As you'll be able to tell, I'm inordinately fond of the legend of Hades and Persephone...although it doesn't completely apply here...but it's close enough? And even though it's probably unlikely that Orihime would be well-versed in Greco-Roman mythology, I like to think that one mythological princess would recognize another._


	3. Language

"Ah, you should stop sulking!" Ichimaru—for she cannot even think of calling him _taichou_—declares. "Do you realize how lucky you are?"

From where she's seated on the ottoman, Orihime's gray eyes burn into him. If the threat of retaliation didn't hang over the former captain, she would have leapt up and smacked him silly early on in this one-sided conversation.

"It isn't every girl who's chosen to be _la princesa de los arrancares_, you know," Ichimaru solemnly informs her, the Spanish rolling off his tongue in a completely natural fashion. "_Que suerte tienes_!"

The Osaka-ben of his Soul Society speech and his newly acquired Spanish—the language of Hueco Mundo—clash horribly. In a way, Orihime finds it reminiscent of Ichimaru's corruption. Not even his language is pure anymore.

* * *

_I'm more or less assuming that Spanish would be the language of Hueco Mundo; after all, the names of pretty much everything tied to it are Spanish (Sonido, Arrancar, Menos Grande, etc, etc). _

_"La princesa de lor arrancares" "the princess of the Arrancar" (Geez, Tite Kubo, turning a verb into a noun? Do you realize how hard you've made it to pluralize it? I took a stab at it, though...)_

_"Que suerte tienes" "You're so lucky!"_


	4. Nightmare

Being stolen away in the midst of the night. Voice breaking, wanting to scream and plead for help. Knowing she was being dragged into darkness, and could do nothing about it. Imprisonment in the land of the damned. The memories have become nightmares.

The nightmares reassert themselves over and over, striking during her most vulnerable nights when she feels like curling under the covers and weeping. It doesn't cause her to wake up screaming anymore, but Aizen usually orders a nighttime guard to watch over her chambers, anyway. Sometimes in the morning, Ichimaru solicitously inquires after her health, his ever-present mocking smile tearing into her.

This, she realizes, must be what Persephone felt like.

* * *

_I am incredibly fixated on the Persephone myth here...I swear I will find a more original topic for the next drabble._


End file.
